This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art, which may be related to various aspects of the present invention that are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present invention. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
A residential gateway is adapted to connect a residential network to the Internet. It permits to receive and distribute in the residential network some video content transported over the Internet protocol (IP). Inside the residential network the video may be transported over a wired or wireless network. If wired networks have showed to be suitable for transporting video services, it requires home devices to be plugged to the wired network. This is not adapted to devices mobility. Wireless technologies, such as IEEE802.11 are more convenient to reach mobile device in a local network, but they don't provide enough quality of service required for video applications. In particular, wireless interferences degrade the wireless transmissions, and as a result the video quality. The IEEE802.11 standard on Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications dated Jun. 12, 2007, noted 802.11 herein below, defines a retransmission mechanism in chapter 9.2.5.3 on recovery procedures and retransmit limits. Retransmission mechanism is part of the distributed coordination function (DCF) mechanism defined in chapter 9.2. In particular, in a frame exchange, the transmitter performs the error recovery mechanism by retrying transmissions for a frame exchange sequence. It performs retransmission until the retransmission is successful or a retry limit is reached. The retry limit is usually set to seven. This mechanism is not sufficient to enable an acceptable video frames transfer over the wireless medium.